Visit Portugal - 10 Things That Will SHOCK You About Portugal

hola fellow travelers mark here with Walter's world and we're in Lisbon Portugal my old stomping grounds I lived here for five years I love Portugal but even place I love like Portugal I know there's things that'll shock a tourist when they come here so what we have for you today are the ten things that are going to shock you when you come to visit Portugal now the first thing is going to shock you is when you go out to eat and you're gonna have to pay for the bread and butter yes the bread on the table the butter on the table the olives these things you do pay for here and actually are in the menu now you'll see that but the thing is if you're coming from the US or other places that Oh chips and salsas free bread is free here it's not the case and I know people that have actually spent more money on the bread the cheese and the ham that they've been given they spend more money on that than they did on their actual meal okay so be careful with that one so you might be shocked yes you do have to pay for the bread and butter in most places not everywhere but just pay attention now if you don't eat it you don't have to pay you don't want it you say no thank you they'll take it away no problem all right so but that'd be the first thing it shocks you the second thing that may shock you is also do with the restaurants is the fact that a lot of the places will close the kitchens between three and seven or eight o'clock at night so if you're a tourist when you're used to eating at five o'clock in the afternoon for dinner realize you're gonna have to go to more tourist areas to get dinner okay so there's places here in Lisbon that do open throughout the day and the kitchen is all the time but a traditional toshko like a family-run restaurant they'll serve food from about 11:00 to about 3:00 and then those super food again from 7:00 till 11:00 or 12:00 now the thing is the restaurants won't necessarily close during the day or during that off time what they'll do is they'll have what are called Salgado's like little savory treats maybe croquettes of me or you get a toast to Mesa toasted a ham and cheese sandwich but if you want your Bucky Olive bras or Bucky Elkin Optus or pork cooperate through the really awesome dishes here it's hard to get in the late afternoon hours so that's gonna shock you but just know if you want the real toshko Portuguese experience you might have to wait for it okay the third thing that might shock you when you come here and this is actually the first thing that shocked me first time I came to Portugal Portuguese bullfighting now if you go to Spain you see the Olleh Olleh stuff and you see the swords and things like that Portuguese bullfighting they don't kill the bull in the stadium and the thing is it's more horse riding in the beginning they ride the horses around to tire out the bull and then there's a bunch of guys in these kind of funny outfits and green hats they kind of look like Portuguese elves they go out there and they literally and they catch the bull I'm not kidding the bull charges him they catch the bull it is completely insane when you see the first time it will shock you you're here in the summer or the fall you might see it on TV and you're just like what the heck yes Portuguese bullfighting where they actually catch the bull it'll shock you the fourth thing that might shock you when you come to Portugal especially to come from the US is the Portuguese love to smoke they smoked a lot here and you'll see people outside and in the cafes and outside banks and outside offices smoking smoking smoking there's no stigma on smoking here in Portugal so a lot of people they come from the US like oh my god everyone here is smoking not everyone but yes smoking is quite common here and it does shock some tourists that yes you can't smoke next to people and the thing is they do have a law you can't smoke inside unless you have designated smoking areas so if you're flying in and out of a Lisbon they actually have like a small like cordoned off area that's just for smokers okay the fifth thing that might shock you when you come here is a tourist is trying to find good lower price and mill price hotels there is definitely a lack of those in Portugal so if you're looking for hotels you're not going to get much great stuff lower in middle and prices so what I recommend is Portugal actually have some of the best hostels I know hostels mark I'm 40 years old 30 years old I don't go to hostels they have family rooms there they have stuff like that but honestly hostel world is ranked a lot of the Portuguese hostels especially here in Lisbon some of the best in the world and also Portugal is really good with vacation rentals getting an apartment we're staying here in apartment this time and it's great we got bedrooms we got laundry we got all kinds of stuff so you're going to go that way but trying to find a cheap hotel or a meal price hotel that's good it's kind of tough so stick the hostels a written apartment or go high price okay but it's kind of shocking where you know you can go from Germany or Austria do you find like good middle price stuff then you don't have so much of that here now the six thing you might shock you about Portugal is their concept of time going out to lunch yes that's gonna be two hours going out to dinner yes it could be a five-hour affair we want to go have lunch with our friends in Centro the other day we ended up at their house for 11 hours time and Portugal is quite relative okay so in someone tells you hey let's have dinner at 7:00 what they probably mean is eight or later okay so don't be surprised so if you meet Portuguese people and they're really nice and they speak English really well and they invite you to do something and they say oh let's meet at 8:00 you you just say hi I'm from a country where eight o'clock means 755 when should I be there okay so just who the host things it'll make your life a lot easier but the concept of time here does get some of the tourists upset because they're always getting a coffee or having a cigarette or things like that now the seventh thing that may shock you about Portugal and may give you white knuckles is the driving oh my goodness it's like every Portuguese person has a little rally driver inside them and it's going to it doesn't matter where you are in the country it's like little rally drivers everywhere and if you take taxis which you will cuz they're nice and affordable here you will feel that oh my god I'm going to die feeling the thing is yes they do Drive kind of crazy here and they drive very fast but one of the weird thing is is I found that if I'm in the crosswalk they actually do stop for me but if I'm walking on the sidewalk and I get a little too close to the edge we way it gets a little close there so be careful one if you're driving or if you've got little kids you keep them next to you all the time okay cuz the driving here is nuts like white-knuckle driving scared out for your life and the taxi sometimes yes that can't happen so just just know that all right now the a thing that might shock you is when you come here to Lisbon you're going to get somebody that offers to sell you sunglasses and then you'll say no no I don't need sunglasses and then they'll say oh hi sheesh cocaina like marijuana or cocaine and said like whoa that Escalade quickly look these people they're sailing trying to sell you drugs they're not selling your real drugs anyway and portugal has decriminalized most drugs so the cops don't really do anything about it it's just one of those little annoyances but just know if you're a tourist and that's the key locals say I don't see this very often it's the tourists that get asked stand outside the rosio station where you go to sintra there's a starbucks there there's people selling drugs all the time we're there with some friends of ours their son is 15 guy came up would you like some drugs like no thank you I'm gonna go go take a train to Sentra instead okay these kind of things so they do ask you huh she's my marijuana cocaina just say no thanks cuz they're not selling your real drugs anyway it's all fake anyway all right but it does kind of shock people and they've asked my mom who's you know a little bit older than me if she wanted drugs she's like no thank you so that might shock you when you're here in Lisbon that's more of a Lisbon centric thing now the ninth thing that might shock you when you come here is how affordable Portugal is this is a cheap vacation to stay to eat to travel it is extremely affordable okay so when you come here your money goes a lot farther you know you get it one of the small beers here it's a euro okay that same small beer and sweet is like eight dollars all right so you do have a much better time here your money goes a lot farther and you see a lot of Tours to started to see that so you get tons and tons of tourists coming to Portugal now for these great prices so I tell people you know they're looking for a warm easy place to go I say look Portugal is great a lot of the people speak English they're very friendly they got great food and it's affordable so it's a great combination and there's direct flights all over Europe and to the u.s. from here so filling Newark places like that it really makes it a great place to go so you'll be shocked how affordable is like wow I can get all this stuff do they do they miss something up no they didn't they got it right okay so that kind of shocks people how affordable it is here and then the tenth thing of my shock you when you're here is you'll see the cobblestones here in Portugal these little tiny squares put together you know and they have designs and stuff like that and it's beautiful but the thing is they can be slick as snot so if you're here and you got you see the water coming on me this is from the foul this stuff can get very slick and if you're wearing high heels and stuff like that it can be very dangerous so just be careful with the slippery pavement because I've seen many a tourists go whoops and fall on their butt on the slippery pavement now it doesn't always rain here in Portugal so it's not a big issue but just pay attention because it can get very slick and if there's dog poop there you know obviously if you slick to sell that I'll do it for you anyway those are ten things that I think that might shock you about visiting Portugal what are some things that shocked you about visiting Portugal please put in the comments section below so we can have some more shocks if you like videos like this why don't you subscribe to our YouTube channel go down there and click the subscribe button ten things that will shock you about Italy ten things they'll shock you about the US five things you're loving about here in Lisbon all on our website at Walters worldcom and here on youtube channel subscribe get videos like this in your feed every week anyway I'll say adios or by from the Blaine district in Lisbon I hope you're not too shocked about coming here to Portugal

Channel: Wolters World

Views: 1,109,685

Keywords: travel, europe, mark wolters, wolters world, advice, tourist, attractions, vlogger, culture shock portugal, whats it like to live in portugal, lisbon, porto, european beaches

Id: JWftgJVS5Ak

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2017